Event Series Planned on Origin of the Contraceptive Pill

LOS ANGELES: Sonar Entertainment has optioned the rights to adapt the non-fiction book The Birth of the Pill: How Four Crusaders Reinvented Sex and Launched a Revolution into a multipart event series.

Written by New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Eig, the book centers on larger-than-life characters such as feminist and social reformer Margaret Sanger, who opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S., and biologist Gregory Goodwin Pincus, co-inventor of the first oral contraceptive. Denise DiNovi of DiNovi Productions (Batman Returns) will executive produce, along with her producing partner Alison Greenspan (If I Stay, The Best Of Me), R.J. Cutler and Audrey Wells.

Emmy-winning director R.J. Cutler (The September Issue) and Wells will write the first episode.

“This vivid history of the little pill that changed the world is as engaging and gripping as the most suspenseful and dramatic work of fiction,” said Tom Patricia, executive VP of event series at Sonar Entertainment. “An epic story of sexual politics, rebellion and scientific discovery, it is as relevant and timely today as it was when the actual events were unfolding. We are extremely excited to have the opportunity to bring it to the screen with such a talented group.”

“I am incredibly excited to shepherd this project along with Alison, R.J., Audrey and Sonar, bringing to life a story that falls neatly into the category of ‘Fact is Stranger than Fiction’,” added DiNovi. “The incredibly complex, real-life characters who, from vastly different directions, worked together to change the course of sexual, cultural and political history will be shocking and surprising. The world would not have been the same without the pill.”